Richwood is a very small city located in the state of West Virginia. With a population of 1,623 people and just one neighborhood, Richwood is the 120th largest community in West Virginia.
Unlike some cities, Richwood isn’t mainly white- or blue-collar. Instead, the most prevalent occupations for people in Richwood are a mix of both white- and blue-collar jobs. Overall, Richwood is a city of service providers, sales and office workers, and professionals. There are especially a lot of people living in Richwood who work in sales jobs (23.45%), healthcare suport services (18.09%), and healthcare (11.89%).
It is a fairly quiet city because there are relatively few of those groups of people who have a tendency to be noisy. (Children, for example, often can't help themselves from being noisy, and being parents ourselves, we know!) Richwood has relatively few families with children living at home, and is quieter because of it. Renters and college students, for their own reasons, can also be noisy. Richwood has few renters and college students. But the biggest reason it is quieter in Richwood than in most places in America, is that there are just simply fewer people living here. If you think trees make good neighbors, Richwood may be for you.
In Richwood, however, the average commute to work is quite long. On average, people spend 35.11 minutes each day getting to work, which is significantly higher than the national average. One bright side is that local public transit is widely used, so it may be an option to avoid the headache of driving in the heavy traffic by leaving the car at home and taking transit.
Richwood, even though it is a small city, has many people who use public transportation every day to get to and from work. This is a great benefit for people in the, city who have a need for low-cost transportation.
The percentage of people in Richwood with college degrees is quite a bit lower than the national average for cities and towns of 21.84%: just 12.02% of people over 25 have a bachelor's degree or advanced degree.
The per capita income in Richwood in 2022 was $25,310, which is lower middle income relative to West Virginia, and low income relative to the rest of the US. This equates to an annual income of $101,240 for a family of four. However, Richwood contains both very wealthy and poor people as well. Richwood also has one of the higher rates of people living in poverty in the nation, with 33.52% of its population below the federal poverty line.
The people who call Richwood home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Richwood residents report their race to be White, followed by Asian. Important ancestries of people in Richwood include English, German, Irish, Dutch, and Welsh.
The most common language spoken in Richwood is English. Other important languages spoken here include Italian and Tagalog.
The way a neighborhood looks and feels when you walk or drive around it, from its setting, its buildings, and its flavor, can make all the difference. This neighborhood has some really cool things about the way it looks and feels as revealed by NeighborhoodScout's exclusive research. This might include anything from the housing stock to the types of households living here to how people get around.
Our research revealed that more commuters here take the bus to work (21.1% ride the bus) than 98.9% of all American neighborhoods. If you like the idea of leaving your car and home and hopping the bus to work, this might be a good neighborhood for you to consider.
Uncrowded roads, rural America and space to be the individual you are. If you like these characteristics, this neighborhood may fit you. With just 26 residents per square mile, is less crowded than 93.4% of all U.S. neighborhoods. One of the notable things about is that it is one of the quietest neighborhoods in America, according to NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis and quantitative rating of quietness. When you are here, you will find it to be very quiet. If quiet and peaceful are your cup of tea, you may have found a great place for you.
In addition, despite all of the residential real estate here in the neighborhood, NeighborhoodScout has discovered that much of it is vacant. In resort or second-home vacation areas, this naturally occurs because homes and apartments are seasonally occupied, and empty for a portion of the year. In non-vacation or resort areas, however, this can be an indicator of property abandonment or a weak real estate market. The vacancy rate here is 43.2%, which is higher than 98.1% of all U.S. neighborhoods.
Did you know that the neighborhood has more Dutch and Welsh ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 13.7% of this neighborhood's residents have Dutch ancestry and 5.2% have Welsh ancestry.
is also pretty special linguistically. Significantly, 1.2% of its residents five years old and above primarily speak Greek at home. While this may seem like a small percentage, it is higher than 97.7% of the neighborhoods in America.
There are two complementary measures for understanding the income of a neighborhood's residents: the average and the extremes. While a neighborhood may be relatively wealthy overall, it is equally important to understand the rate of people - particularly children - who are living at or below the federal poverty line, which is extremely low income. Some neighborhoods with a lower average income may actually have a lower childhood poverty rate than another with a higher average income, and this helps us understand the conditions and character of a neighborhood.
The neighbors in the neighborhood in Richwood are low income, making it among the lowest income neighborhoods in America. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 89.6% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 29.0% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 80.8% of U.S. neighborhoods.
The old saying "you are what you eat" is true. But it is also true that you are what you do for a living. The types of occupations your neighbors have shape their character, and together as a group, their collective occupations shape the culture of a place.
In the neighborhood, 36.6% of the working population is employed in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations. The second most important occupational group in this neighborhood is sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants, with 24.3% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in executive, management, and professional occupations (20.1%), and 19.0% in manufacturing and laborer occupations.
The languages spoken by people in this neighborhood are diverse. These are tabulated as the languages people preferentially speak when they are at home with their families. The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 96.9% of households. Other important languages spoken here include Tagalog (the first language of the Philippine region) and Italian.
Culture is shared learned behavior. We learn it from our parents, their parents, our houses of worship, and much of our culture – our learned behavior – comes from our ancestors. That is why ancestry and ethnicity can be so interesting and important to understand: places with concentrations of people of one or more ancestries often express those shared learned behaviors and this gives each neighborhood its own culture. Even different neighborhoods in the same city can have drastically different cultures.
In the neighborhood in Richwood, WV, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as German (14.2%). There are also a number of people of Dutch ancestry (13.7%), and residents who report Irish roots (13.4%), and some of the residents are also of English ancestry (13.2%), along with some French ancestry residents (9.6%), among others.
Even if your neighborhood is walkable, you may still have to drive to your place of work. Some neighborhoods are located where many can get to work in just a few minutes, while others are located such that most residents have a long and arduous commute. The greatest number of commuters in neighborhood spend between 45 minutes and one hour commuting one-way to work (40.8% of working residents), longer and tougher than most commutes in America.
Here most residents (68.9%) drive alone in a private automobile to get to work. In addition, quite a number also ride the bus to get to work (21.1%) . In a neighborhood like this, as in most of the nation, many residents find owning a car useful for getting to work.